At the start of the
Civil War, Canby commanded
Fort Defiance,
New Mexico Territory. He was promoted to
colonel of the
19th U.S. Infantry on May 14, 1861, and the following month commanded the
Department of New Mexico. His former assistant Sibley resigned to join the
Confederate Army, becoming a Brigadier General. Sibley's
Army of New Mexico defeated Canby and his troops in February 1862 at the
Battle of Valverde. Canby eventually forced the Confederates to retreat to
Texas after the
Union's strategic victory at the
Battle of Glorieta Pass. Immediately following this battle, Canby was promoted to brigadier general on March 31, 1862. Recombining the forces he had earlier divided, Canby set off in pursuit of the retreating Confederate forces, but he soon gave up the chase and allowed them to reach
Texas. Shortly after the failure of the Confederate invasion of northern New Mexico, Canby was relieved of his command by Gen.
James H. Carleton, and reassigned to the east. Canby's achievement in New Mexico had largely been in his planning an overall defensive strategy. He and his opponent, Sibley, both had limited resources. Though Canby was a little better supplied, he saw that defending the entire territory from every possible attack would stretch his forces too thinly. Realizing that Sibley had to attack along a river, especially since New Mexico was in the middle of a long
drought, Canby made the best use of his forces by defending against only two possible scenarios: an attack along the
Rio Grande and an attack by way of the
Pecos and
Canadian rivers. He could easily shift the latter defensive force to protect
Fort Union if the enemy attacked by way of the Rio Grande, which they did. Canby persuaded the governors of New Mexico and
Colorado to raise volunteer units to supplement regular Federal troops. The Colorado troops proved helpful at both
Valverde and
Glorieta. In spite of occasional superior soldiering by Confederate troops and junior commanders, Sibley's sluggishness and vacillation in executing a plan with high risk led to an almost inevitable Confederate collapse. After a period of clerical duty, Canby was assigned as "commanding general of the city and harbor of New York City" on July 17, 1863. This assignment followed the
New York Draft Riots, which caused about 120 deaths and extensive property damage. He served until November 9, reviving the draft, and overseeing a
prisoner of war camp in
New York Harbor. He then went to work in the office of the Secretary of War, unofficially describing himself in correspondence as an "Assistant Adjutant General." Looking back on Canby's record, a 20th-century adjutant general, Edward F. Witsell, described Canby's position as "similar to that of an Assistant to the Secretary of the Army." In May 1864, Canby was promoted to
major general and relieved
Nathaniel P. Banks of his command at
Simmesport, Louisiana. He next was assigned to the
Midwest, where he commanded the Military Division of Western
Mississippi. He was wounded in the upper thigh by a
guerrilla while aboard the gunboat
USS Cricket on the
White River in
Arkansas near Little Island on November 6, 1864. In the spring of 1865, Canby commanded the Union forces assigned to conduct the campaign against
Mobile, Alabama. This culminated in the
Battle of Fort Blakeley, which led to the fall of Mobile on April 12, 1865. Canby accepted the surrender of the Confederate forces under General
Richard Taylor in
Citronelle, on May 4, 1865, and those under General
Edmund Kirby Smith west of the Mississippi River on May 26, 1865. Canby was generally regarded as a great
administrator, but he was criticized as a soldier.
Ulysses S. Grant thought him not aggressive enough. At one time, Grant sent Canby an order to "destroy [the enemy's]
railroads,
machine-shops, &c." Ten days later, Grant reprimanded him for requesting men and materials to build railroads. "I wrote... urging you to... destroy railroads, machine-shops, &c., not to build them", Grant said. Canby could be a destroyer, but appeared to prefer the role of builder. If someone had a question about army regulations or
Constitutional law affecting the military, Canby was the man to see. Grant came to appreciate this in peace time, once complaining vigorously when President
Andrew Johnson proposed to assign Canby away from the capital, where Grant considered him irreplaceable.
Central Lunatic Asylum for Colored Insane In April 1869, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton appointed General Canby as military governor of Virginia. Soon after Canby arrived in Richmond, he confiscated each of the medical facilities in the city and converted them for use by the Union Army. In the next several months, Canby was made aware of the critical medical and economic plight of thousands of formerly enslaved blacks in the state uprooted by the Civil War. Canby had to decide how to provide blacks access to health and mental health services without violating the racial pecking order that existed in the South. One area in dispute was whether blacks would be allowed admission to the state's existing mental asylums at Williamsburg and Staunton. Racial integration of these two asylums had been debated in the legislature and the psychiatric community for over a decade. Dr. John Galt, superintendent of Eastern Lunatic Asylum at Williamsburg believed that free blacks and whites could be treated medically in the same facility as he had demonstrated. However, Dr. Francis Stribling, superintendent of Western Lunatic Asylum at Staunton refused to admit either free or enslaved blacks to his institution. Following the death of Galt, Stribling became chair of an asylum planning committee that advised Canby and the Freedman's Bureau on a permanent admission policy for the black population. Stribling proposed that Virginia should construct a separate asylum for the admission and treatment of blacks with lunacy. Canby accepted his recommendation and included it as the basis of his military order number 136, published in December 1869. Canby's order required continued utilization of a rented annex at Howard's Grove Hospital as the temporary psychiatric hospital for blacks, until the state of Virginia could decide whether to maintain and expand it or construct a new facility. In June 1870, the Virginia legislature accepted ownership of the Central Lunatic Asylum for Colored Insane, the first standalone facility in the United States. It remained located at the Howard's Grove site until 1885, when a new facility was constructed in Dinwiddie County some 40 miles south of Richmond, and renamed
Central State Hospital. Canby should be credited with creating the first (racially segregated) mental hospital in the US for African Americans. The hospital remained segregated by race until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ==Post-war assignments==